The Ways Education Poverty and Crime Intersect

Written by Yahya D. Waye

Last updated: Oct. 25, 2022 • 5-6 min read

The path to Education isn’t always simple...

The American idea of success is intrinsically tied to work, education, and family. These are typically some of the first things that come up in conversation when meeting new people. Most of us will spend the majority of our lives in some form of school and employment, and for many the path from student to worker is laid out as a set of options. This usually comes in the form of different cultural norms and society wide institutions.

Elementary school, Middle school, High school and finally College where you will learn skills and earn a degree that gives you higher earning potential and an overall likelihood of higher job satisfaction. But for many others the options can be rather limited for a number of factors (Some of which will be mentioned in this blog). There is a correlation between criminogenic behavior and education and some of those connections may not be what you’d expect.

Education's Effects on Crime

As shocking as it may be to any students reading this instead of doing their homework, education actually teaches long term planning skills as well as patience and conflict resolution. Some facts from a 2010 paper called “The Crime Reducing Effect of Education” by authors StephenMachin, Olivier Marie, and Sunčica Vujić. Quote, “From the existing socio-economic literature there are (at least) three main channels through which schooling might affect criminal participation: income effects, time availability, and patience or risk aversion.” The paper goes on to break down those three main channels. Income effects essentially means the better your education, the better the job opportunities available to you become. The better the job the higher the pay. And people who are well paid and feel well paid typically don't commit crimes out of fear of losing that hard earned job. The paper concludes, “subsidies that encourage investments in human capital reduce crime indirectly by raising future wage rates”. Referencing a separate paper they include, “The author shows that graduating from high school reduces criminal productivity and that criminals have on average less education than non-criminals(Grogger, 1998)”. Well paid, well educated people who feel like they have a place of value in society simply don’t need to commit crime.

The next ones pretty simple, time availability is quite literally though “cynically” a reference to the age old concept of “whilst kids are at school they are being kept off the streets”. Teens who are arrested before completion of high school are significantly more likely to drop out over their peers. Keeping teens and young adults in some form of education is a major way to alleviate poverty, and prevent crime.

Finally patience or risk aversion,”Young people who dropout of school tend to be myopic and more focussed on immediate costs from schooling (stress from taking tests, uninteresting curricula, foregone earnings, etc.), rather than on future gains from an additional year of schooling.” Younger people typically lack abstract reasoning abilities and are already prone to risky behavior but education teaches skills like patience which is a good quality to have in a work environment.

All of these factors come together to paint a pretty simple picture. Education leads to poverty reduction which leads to crime reduction. Socially pushing for subsidies that increase funding to after school programs and extracurricular activities is especially important in areas of low socioeconomic status.

Final Thoughts

I think it was put best and most concisely in a separate paper. “Education and Crime” from 2009 and written by Gordon A. Crews of The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, “The lack of education one has very often increases the likelihood that they will become involved in crime and antisocial behavior. Thus the opposite is considered true as well; the more education an individual has the increased likelihood that they will live a crimefree life.” This screams something I believe many people already know without having to quote a research paper, poverty is the usual cause of crime. One of the easiest ways we could alleviate this issue would be to increase access to quality education. We can as a society help everyone reach their full potential if we truly believe and accept the idea that everyone deserves an education.